Notts County

1 January 1970

Notts County slideshow

Carlos Carvalhal's revolution: how the charismatic manager turned Swansea's season around

Out of the relegation zone on mere goal difference alone, the last thing Swansea and Carlos Carvalhal need to be doing now is getting ahead of themselves. But on the back of wins over Liverpool and Arsenal, followed by a morale-boosting 8-1 trouncing of Notts County, you couldn't really blame the fans for getting just a little bit excited. After spending six weeks rooted to the foot of the table and with barely a hope in hell of staying up, Carvalhal has led Swansea out of the bottom three and into the fifth round of the FA Cup where, incidentally, he faces a trip back to the club he left on Christmas Eve amid rumours he had engineered a move away. The Portuguese, previously a stranger to English football, was met with the usual dose degree of scepticism when he was appointed as Sheffield Wednesday's manager in the summer of 2015, replacing the relatively popular Stuart Gray in the hope he could guide the club to "where they want to be, the Premier League," as Wednesday chairman Dejphon Chansiri said at the time. Carvalhal made a slow start but once his players began to understand and execute his ideas properly they became a force to be reckoned with. He took a fluent Wednesday side to the play-offs twice in succession, and the fans loved him for it (until it all started to fall apart this season). Having already had a profound effect, he is looking like he could become a favourite at the Liberty Stadium, too. Swansea's league position this season week on week Outgoing Swansea manager Paul Clement had come in a year previously with an exciting CV, having worked under Carlo Ancelotti at Chelsea, PSG, Real Madrid and Bayern. It was an appointment that captured the imagination: a young, British manager with bags of potential was finally being given a chance at the top. Rejoice! But the trial brought little success. He departed with the club in the same position as he found it. Results hadn't improved, and at the root of the problem lay a lack of philosophy or direction. The last remnants of the tiki-taka playing Swans that had joined the Premier League in 2011 were gone. No more was the short-passing team that scaled the English footballing pyramid; the rapid managerial changes from Brendan Rodgers to Michael Laudrup to Francesco Guidolin to Bob Bradley and then Clement saw to that. Swansea have chopped and changed between managers in recent years, giving the team little continuity in playing style Credit: Getty images This season alone, in 20 league games under Clement, Swansea flitted between playing 4-3-3 (seven times), a 4-4-2 diamond (six times), 3-5-2 (four times), 4-5-1 (twice) and 3-1-4-2 (once). There was no discernible playing style: they weren't a well-drilled defensive unit, nor a team that countered, focused on set-pieces, played particularly direct or favoured possession-based football like they used to. A 12-game run in which Swansea beat only West Brom - and even that was hardly convincing - sapped the squad of all remaining confidence. The season has been interspersed with far too many low points already, but the 1-0 home defeat to Brighton, bang in the middle of the aforementioned poor run, felt like a nadir. Finger-pointing and a lack of leadership in defence, along with no incisiveness, cohesion or cutting edge in attack littered the performance. Compare that with the Swansea we saw waltz past Notts County this week and there is some difference. There is a swagger to Swansea now that befits the charisma and charm that Carvalhal possesses, as well as they energy he displays on the sidelines. This particular result may only have been League Two opposition, but the confidence Swansea showed on Wednesday was testament to the transformative effect their new manager has had. Pastéis de nata! ���� Carlos brings a little bit of home to the press pack ahead of today’s press conference… �� pic.twitter.com/J0Yoth7JYH— Swansea City AFC (@SwansOfficial) February 8, 2018 Against lesser opposition, they dictate the pace of the game, they like to keep the ball, the wingers stretch play out wide, the full-backs wander into positions in-field to add bulk to central midfield in much the same modern way that (whisper it) Manchester City play. There is a discernible style, and the players looks like they know their jobs. That is far from the height of this run, though, during which Carvalhal has turned their season on its head. The extent of the turnaround is encapsulated in the difference between the 5-0 defeat at Anfield and the 1-0 win over Liverpool, two performances light years apart in their quality but in actual fact separated by less than four weeks. While they went to Liverpool and were torn apart time and again with no ball-winner in defensive midfield in a 4-5-1 formation, they set up pragmatically for the home tie, with an extra defender in a 5-4-1 formation and Ki Sung-yueng stationed in front of the back five. The return to fitness of the South Korean has coincided with Swansea's improvement in form. Ki plays a crucial and undervalued role for Swansea Credit: Getty images Grossly underrated and undervalued, Ki, who was quite bizarrely sent out on loan to Sunderland in 2013/14, is a reliable, technical midfielder who reads the game well and provides the glue that keeps this Swansea team together. He has played 90 minutes in each of their last four games: wins over Arsenal and Liverpool and 1-1 draws at Newcastle and Leicester. He adds extra security to the defence, and gives his team-mates some relief after periods of pressure by breaking up play and then retaining possession. His pass completion rate over the course of his 155-game Premier League career is up at a hugely impressive 90.9 per cent. Ki epitomises so much of what is so captivating about Swansea City. They were brave and bold in their approach when they first made it to the Premier League and it worked; their changes of style over the years have not paid dividends. But Carvalhal is giving the team the confidence to get back to the Swansea of old. It is early days yet and there is plenty of work to be done to survive, but the early signs are positive at the Liberty Stadium.

Carlos Carvalhal's revolution: how the charismatic manager turned Swansea's season around

Out of the relegation zone on mere goal difference alone, the last thing Swansea and Carlos Carvalhal need to be doing now is getting ahead of themselves. But on the back of wins over Liverpool and Arsenal, followed by a morale-boosting 8-1 trouncing of Notts County, you couldn't really blame the fans for getting just a little bit excited. After spending six weeks rooted to the foot of the table and with barely a hope in hell of staying up, Carvalhal has led Swansea out of the bottom three and into the fifth round of the FA Cup where, incidentally, he faces a trip back to the club he left on Christmas Eve amid rumours he had engineered a move away. The Portuguese, previously a stranger to English football, was met with the usual dose degree of scepticism when he was appointed as Sheffield Wednesday's manager in the summer of 2015, replacing the relatively popular Stuart Gray in the hope he could guide the club to "where they want to be, the Premier League," as Wednesday chairman Dejphon Chansiri said at the time. Carvalhal made a slow start but once his players began to understand and execute his ideas properly they became a force to be reckoned with. He took a fluent Wednesday side to the play-offs twice in succession, and the fans loved him for it (until it all started to fall apart this season). Having already had a profound effect, he is looking like he could become a favourite at the Liberty Stadium, too. Swansea's league position this season week on week Outgoing Swansea manager Paul Clement had come in a year previously with an exciting CV, having worked under Carlo Ancelotti at Chelsea, PSG, Real Madrid and Bayern. It was an appointment that captured the imagination: a young, British manager with bags of potential was finally being given a chance at the top. Rejoice! But the trial brought little success. He departed with the club in the same position as he found it. Results hadn't improved, and at the root of the problem lay a lack of philosophy or direction. The last remnants of the tiki-taka playing Swans that had joined the Premier League in 2011 were gone. No more was the short-passing team that scaled the English footballing pyramid; the rapid managerial changes from Brendan Rodgers to Michael Laudrup to Francesco Guidolin to Bob Bradley and then Clement saw to that. Swansea have chopped and changed between managers in recent years, giving the team little continuity in playing style Credit: Getty images This season alone, in 20 league games under Clement, Swansea flitted between playing 4-3-3 (seven times), a 4-4-2 diamond (six times), 3-5-2 (four times), 4-5-1 (twice) and 3-1-4-2 (once). There was no discernible playing style: they weren't a well-drilled defensive unit, nor a team that countered, focused on set-pieces, played particularly direct or favoured possession-based football like they used to. A 12-game run in which Swansea beat only West Brom - and even that was hardly convincing - sapped the squad of all remaining confidence. The season has been interspersed with far too many low points already, but the 1-0 home defeat to Brighton, bang in the middle of the aforementioned poor run, felt like a nadir. Finger-pointing and a lack of leadership in defence, along with no incisiveness, cohesion or cutting edge in attack littered the performance. Compare that with the Swansea we saw waltz past Notts County this week and there is some difference. There is a swagger to Swansea now that befits the charisma and charm that Carvalhal possesses, as well as they energy he displays on the sidelines. This particular result may only have been League Two opposition, but the confidence Swansea showed on Wednesday was testament to the transformative effect their new manager has had. Pastéis de nata! ���� Carlos brings a little bit of home to the press pack ahead of today’s press conference… �� pic.twitter.com/J0Yoth7JYH— Swansea City AFC (@SwansOfficial) February 8, 2018 Against lesser opposition, they dictate the pace of the game, they like to keep the ball, the wingers stretch play out wide, the full-backs wander into positions in-field to add bulk to central midfield in much the same modern way that (whisper it) Manchester City play. There is a discernible style, and the players looks like they know their jobs. That is far from the height of this run, though, during which Carvalhal has turned their season on its head. The extent of the turnaround is encapsulated in the difference between the 5-0 defeat at Anfield and the 1-0 win over Liverpool, two performances light years apart in their quality but in actual fact separated by less than four weeks. While they went to Liverpool and were torn apart time and again with no ball-winner in defensive midfield in a 4-5-1 formation, they set up pragmatically for the home tie, with an extra defender in a 5-4-1 formation and Ki Sung-yueng stationed in front of the back five. The return to fitness of the South Korean has coincided with Swansea's improvement in form. Ki plays a crucial and undervalued role for Swansea Credit: Getty images Grossly underrated and undervalued, Ki, who was quite bizarrely sent out on loan to Sunderland in 2013/14, is a reliable, technical midfielder who reads the game well and provides the glue that keeps this Swansea team together. He has played 90 minutes in each of their last four games: wins over Arsenal and Liverpool and 1-1 draws at Newcastle and Leicester. He adds extra security to the defence, and gives his team-mates some relief after periods of pressure by breaking up play and then retaining possession. His pass completion rate over the course of his 155-game Premier League career is up at a hugely impressive 90.9 per cent. Ki epitomises so much of what is so captivating about Swansea City. They were brave and bold in their approach when they first made it to the Premier League and it worked; their changes of style over the years have not paid dividends. But Carvalhal is giving the team the confidence to get back to the Swansea of old. It is early days yet and there is plenty of work to be done to survive, but the early signs are positive at the Liberty Stadium.

Carlos Carvalhal's revolution: how the charismatic manager turned Swansea's season around

Out of the relegation zone on mere goal difference alone, the last thing Swansea and Carlos Carvalhal need to be doing now is getting ahead of themselves. But on the back of wins over Liverpool and Arsenal, followed by a morale-boosting 8-1 trouncing of Notts County, you couldn't really blame the fans for getting just a little bit excited. After spending six weeks rooted to the foot of the table and with barely a hope in hell of staying up, Carvalhal has led Swansea out of the bottom three and into the fifth round of the FA Cup where, incidentally, he faces a trip back to the club he left on Christmas Eve amid rumours he had engineered a move away. The Portuguese, previously a stranger to English football, was met with the usual dose degree of scepticism when he was appointed as Sheffield Wednesday's manager in the summer of 2015, replacing the relatively popular Stuart Gray in the hope he could guide the club to "where they want to be, the Premier League," as Wednesday chairman Dejphon Chansiri said at the time. Carvalhal made a slow start but once his players began to understand and execute his ideas properly they became a force to be reckoned with. He took a fluent Wednesday side to the play-offs twice in succession, and the fans loved him for it (until it all started to fall apart this season). Having already had a profound effect, he is looking like he could become a favourite at the Liberty Stadium, too. Swansea's league position this season week on week Outgoing Swansea manager Paul Clement had come in a year previously with an exciting CV, having worked under Carlo Ancelotti at Chelsea, PSG, Real Madrid and Bayern. It was an appointment that captured the imagination: a young, British manager with bags of potential was finally being given a chance at the top. Rejoice! But the trial brought little success. He departed with the club in the same position as he found it. Results hadn't improved, and at the root of the problem lay a lack of philosophy or direction. The last remnants of the tiki-taka playing Swans that had joined the Premier League in 2011 were gone. No more was the short-passing team that scaled the English footballing pyramid; the rapid managerial changes from Brendan Rodgers to Michael Laudrup to Francesco Guidolin to Bob Bradley and then Clement saw to that. Swansea have chopped and changed between managers in recent years, giving the team little continuity in playing style Credit: Getty images This season alone, in 20 league games under Clement, Swansea flitted between playing 4-3-3 (seven times), a 4-4-2 diamond (six times), 3-5-2 (four times), 4-5-1 (twice) and 3-1-4-2 (once). There was no discernible playing style: they weren't a well-drilled defensive unit, nor a team that countered, focused on set-pieces, played particularly direct or favoured possession-based football like they used to. A 12-game run in which Swansea beat only West Brom - and even that was hardly convincing - sapped the squad of all remaining confidence. The season has been interspersed with far too many low points already, but the 1-0 home defeat to Brighton, bang in the middle of the aforementioned poor run, felt like a nadir. Finger-pointing and a lack of leadership in defence, along with no incisiveness, cohesion or cutting edge in attack littered the performance. Compare that with the Swansea we saw waltz past Notts County this week and there is some difference. There is a swagger to Swansea now that befits the charisma and charm that Carvalhal possesses, as well as they energy he displays on the sidelines. This particular result may only have been League Two opposition, but the confidence Swansea showed on Wednesday was testament to the transformative effect their new manager has had. Pastéis de nata! ���� Carlos brings a little bit of home to the press pack ahead of today’s press conference… �� pic.twitter.com/J0Yoth7JYH— Swansea City AFC (@SwansOfficial) February 8, 2018 Against lesser opposition, they dictate the pace of the game, they like to keep the ball, the wingers stretch play out wide, the full-backs wander into positions in-field to add bulk to central midfield in much the same modern way that (whisper it) Manchester City play. There is a discernible style, and the players looks like they know their jobs. That is far from the height of this run, though, during which Carvalhal has turned their season on its head. The extent of the turnaround is encapsulated in the difference between the 5-0 defeat at Anfield and the 1-0 win over Liverpool, two performances light years apart in their quality but in actual fact separated by less than four weeks. While they went to Liverpool and were torn apart time and again with no ball-winner in defensive midfield in a 4-5-1 formation, they set up pragmatically for the home tie, with an extra defender in a 5-4-1 formation and Ki Sung-yueng stationed in front of the back five. The return to fitness of the South Korean has coincided with Swansea's improvement in form. Ki plays a crucial and undervalued role for Swansea Credit: Getty images Grossly underrated and undervalued, Ki, who was quite bizarrely sent out on loan to Sunderland in 2013/14, is a reliable, technical midfielder who reads the game well and provides the glue that keeps this Swansea team together. He has played 90 minutes in each of their last four games: wins over Arsenal and Liverpool and 1-1 draws at Newcastle and Leicester. He adds extra security to the defence, and gives his team-mates some relief after periods of pressure by breaking up play and then retaining possession. His pass completion rate over the course of his 155-game Premier League career is up at a hugely impressive 90.9 per cent. Ki epitomises so much of what is so captivating about Swansea City. They were brave and bold in their approach when they first made it to the Premier League and it worked; their changes of style over the years have not paid dividends. But Carvalhal is giving the team the confidence to get back to the Swansea of old. It is early days yet and there is plenty of work to be done to survive, but the early signs are positive at the Liberty Stadium.

Carlos Carvalhal will not admit to any vengeance in his heart, but, be sure, he is relishing his FA Cup trip back to Sheffield Wednesday , the club he so almost took to the Premier League, but who sacked him last Christmas Eve. There he will be back at Hillsborough, a mere 10 weeks after the P45 humiliation, a Premier League manager, with the scalps of Liverpool and Arsenal in his locker, with relegation safety a realistic aim in his sights, and looking to take Swansea to the Cup quarter-finals for the first time in 54 years. “It will be like going home," he said. "We achieved two play offs, something very strong. I will be an Owl forever – but I believe that I will be a Jack forever in future." In fact, Carvalhal has so much to brag about with his necessary quick-fire employment, that this eight-goal thumping of poor Notts County – a Cup record for Swansea - will not begin to feature. And neither should it. Credit to Kevin Nolan’s League Two outfit for advancing this far, but at a scandalously under-populated Liberty Stadium this was about as far away from Cup romance as one can imagine. This display offered so much to Carvalhal, but probably most of all a richly welcome positivity in a headache on selection. He made six changes and it is fair to say the reserves stepped up. FA Cup fifth round draw Nolan tried to flood the midfield, resorting to a 4-5-1 and leaving Shola Ameobi on a bench which also included Alan Smith, the 19-time English international, who was to make an appearance in death throes which do not begin to befit his career. Yet in the event the only person gasping for air was goalkeeper, Adam Collin. True, there were a few moments when the minnows burst to the surface and tasted the air; chiefly after Noor Husin’s strike in the 36th minute. But by that time, they were three down. It was rousing, even exciting, for a while, yet, in truth, Nolan should have been far more positive far earlier. Instead, he barely had time to beseech his men to go forward. County were gone in 60 seconds. That is all it took, after the white rush of the opening flurry, for Tammy Abraham to net his first for four months in the 18th minute and then for the excellent Nathan Dyer to tuck away Abraham’s sumptuous through ball. And when Dyer struck again on the half hour, this time from the edge of the box following an irresistible passage culminating in the excellent Luciano Narsingh’s cut-back, it was a case of dream over. To County’s credit they poured forward and Husin’s curler to locate the net off the post offered his team a sniff. Indeed, it was positively alluring in the forthcoming minutes as the ball tantalisingly continued to bounce around the home area. Inevitably, however, the visitors’ enthusiasm left gaps at the back and so Abraham applied the necessaries to a move which involved at least 10 passes. From then, on it became it became brutal, an X-rated video nasty screened live on BBC1. There was to be no response in the second half, apart from the 1,000-odd travelling fans who, so commendably, afforded this tie some atmosphere. The Swansea support which did turn up had Kyle Naughton to salute, with the fifth, Wayne Routledge with the sixth, Tom Carroll with the seventh and then a debut goal for the 20-year-old Daniel James. The whistle seemed kind. Match details Swansea City (4-4-1-1): Nordfeldt, Naughton, Bartley, van der Hoorn, Roberts; Narsingh, Carroll, Clucas, Routledge; Dyer; Abraham. Subs: Maric, Ki, Olsson, Jordan Ayew, Mulder, Fernandez, James. Notts County (4-5-1): Collin; Hunt, Duffy, Brisley, Dickinson, Grant, Husin, Virtue, Hawkridge, Alessandra; Stead. Subs: Ameobi, Pindroch, Forte, Smith, Noble, Walker, Milsom. Referee: M Atkinson (W Yorkshire).